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enGive gratitude for your holiday haul: create thank-yous at the Louisville Library’s Many Thanks! craft timehttp://www.louisville.com/content/give-gratitude-your-holiday-haul-create-thank-yous-louisville-library%E2%80%99s-many-thanks-craft-ti
<div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/content/give-gratitude-your-holiday-haul-create-thank-yous-louisville-library%E2%80%99s-many-thanks-craft-ti"><img src="http://www.louisville.com/sites/default/files/u4240/many%20thanks%20library%20craft%20time%20article.jpg" width="336" height="336" alt="Give gratitude for your holiday haul: create thank-yous at the Louisville Librar" title="Give gratitude for your holiday haul: create thank-yous at the Louisville Library’s Many Thanks! craft time" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p align="left">I have a vendetta against Thank You cards &ndash; this is, perhaps, not the correct way to begin this kind of article is it, kittens?&nbsp; The Wrong Impression could be a legitimate concern here, judging solely by the above expressed feeling.&nbsp;</p><p align="left">A narrative hook eschewing gratitude for an event promoting it?&nbsp; Questionable.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m supposed to be telling you about the warm and wholesome Many Thanks! craft time at the <a href="http://www.lfpl.org/index.htm">Louisville Free Public Library</a>&rsquo;s Main branch (that&rsquo;s what I said I was going to do with the title).&nbsp; About how it&rsquo;s geared to hands-on holiday appreciation.&nbsp; About how it&rsquo;s an excellent way to show youngins&rsquo; that the gluttony of getting is not nearly as important as the glow of giving.&nbsp; About how it&rsquo;s tomorrow.&nbsp; At 2pm.&nbsp; Tomorrow is Thursday, December 27<sup>th</sup>.&nbsp; Wee ones might be a little stir crazy by then.</p><p align="left">You are thinking, though, that this is going to transform into the majestic and colorful butterfly of an Epic Rant against Gratitude.&nbsp; Not so, loves.&nbsp; Listen:</p><p align="left">I have a vendetta against Thank You cards &ndash; simply because I know what they <em>really mean</em>.&nbsp; The meaning &ndash; I mean &ndash; that has very little to do with the Thanks expressed in whatever curly script stamped on factory cardstock.&nbsp; This Thank You from You to Me is a handwritten act of grateful slavery.&nbsp; This Thank You is a painfully-forced beautiful moment of obligation from You to Me forever immortalized on paper.&nbsp; I can picture You writing to Me in a carpal tunnel tirade as You slog through the long list of People to whom You are supposed to give painstaking Thanks.&nbsp; Thanks for whatever it is Me and People all collectively did for You &ndash; probably some silly Life Event.&nbsp; There was probably cake and awkward photography involved.</p><p align="left">But I can feel how much you don&rsquo;t really want to write those Thank Yous, even if you are truly grateful.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure you are.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure that &ndash; in the moment of said Life Event &ndash; you felt all kinds of gold on the inside (I hope) as Me and People gathered &lsquo;round you.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure the all kinds of gold went straight through your chest, through your heart and exploded into your head.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure it popped all kinds of fizzy bubbles of Good when we slobbered human love all over you for a minute.&nbsp; Even if it was hectic and a little weird and whirl-windy embarrassing on the outside, deep down, in the belly parts, it was a gooey kind of wonderful.&nbsp;</p><p align="left">I know you&rsquo;re thankful for it.&nbsp; Whatever it was.&nbsp;</p><p align="left">I&rsquo;m thankful Me and People could do all that stuff to your insides.&nbsp; Everybody needs the gold and the bubbles and the goo just for them at some point or another.&nbsp; In the moment, it sure was grand, eh?</p><hr /><p align="left">But after the fact?&nbsp; After the fact it&rsquo;s a lot of ash.&nbsp; The graying lumps of charcoal making dust in the grate.&nbsp; Gold like that can&rsquo;t burn brilliant forever, folks.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s not meant to.&nbsp; So this Thank You in the mail, After-The-Fact, isn&rsquo;t as genuine.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a cheaper replica.&nbsp; A stark and cold sliver of dead tree with a slapdash of handwriting on it that attempts to encapsulate whatever it was that burst like a champagne bottle for Us earlier.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t like it.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t like it.&nbsp; This is not what we had.&nbsp; Boooo&hellip;</p><p align="left">There is a lot of potential for this sad imitation to happen now that the big hullabaloo is over.&nbsp; Now that Christmas has been Merry and Hanukkah has been Happy and the Season has been totally Greeted.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure we all did a bang-up job flooding each other with molten gold goo.</p><p align="left">I was given a lot of Good Books.&nbsp; And some Bob Ross.&nbsp; And some Frank Sinatra.&nbsp; And yet another dose of Painful But Necessary Life Affirmations.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m very grateful for all of it (in some form or another).&nbsp; But I&rsquo;m not sending out anything prefabricated to anyone.&nbsp; Nope.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p align="left">Please now note my use of the word &ldquo;prefabricated&rdquo;.&nbsp;</p><p align="left">Please now allow me to show you where my vendetta against the Thank You ends: your hands.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve already waxed about the human hand <a href="http://www.louisville.com/content/photographer-david-toczko-brings-story-maker%E2%80%99s-mark-bourbon-barnes-noble">before</a>.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a biological thing of beauty and might.&nbsp; You know.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ve got your own pair, most likely.</p><p align="left">I think this is the place to use them.&nbsp;</p><p align="left">There is no obligation to ever thank me on paper &ndash; or thank me at all, really.&nbsp; I&rsquo;d rather just watch you be happy.&nbsp; But if your cup simply runneth over, and this moment of Good you are thankful for simply must be made tangible &ndash; make it real.&nbsp; Make it with your hands.&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s the word: craft it.&nbsp;</p><p align="left">Now it&rsquo;s A Thing.&nbsp; Now it Means Something.&nbsp; Now it&rsquo;s good and golden.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll save that Thing, because it really just is from You to Me.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a lot of cheesy and warm-fuzzy stuff that will be going on here, too.&nbsp; We&rsquo;re both going to feel like two big ol&rsquo; saps.&nbsp; Sheepish.&nbsp; It&rsquo;ll be super grand.&nbsp; And we&rsquo;ll both super love it deep down where the Love-magma lives.</p><p align="left">Is this the kind of Life Lesson the library us going to dole out when the wee ones gather tomorrow to color and sticker and glitter at Many Thanks! craft time?&nbsp; Probably not to this degree &ndash; MY degree.&nbsp; But their little hands will still be busy and happy and golden, and that Thanks will be a pretty Real Thanks.&nbsp;</p><p align="left">So: Many Thanks! craft time tomorrow, Thursday, December 27<sup>th</sup> at 2pm at the Main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library.&nbsp; Totally free.</p><p align="left">Also: it&rsquo;s snowing.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m pretty thankful for that.&nbsp;</p><p align="left">The Louisville Free Public Library&rsquo;s Main branch is located at 301 York Street.</p><p align="left"><em>Image: Courtesy of Photobucket <a href="http://www.photobucket.com">www.photobucket.com</a></em></p></div></div></div>Wed, 26 Dec 2012 19:38:51 +0000Erin Day68524 at http://www.louisville.com